Azure : Resource usage API issue - azure

I tried to pull the Azure resource usage data for billing metrics. I followed the steps as mentioned in the blog to get Usage data of resources.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/mt219001.aspx
Even If I set "start and endtime" parameter in the URL, its not take effect. It returns entire output [ from resource created/added time ].
For example :
https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Commerce/UsageAggregates?api-version=2015-06-01-preview&reportedStartTime=2017-03-03T00%3a00%3a00%2b00%3a00&reportedEndTime=2017-03-04T00%3a00%3a00%2b00%3a00&aggregationGranularity=Hourly&showDetails=true"
As per the above URL, it should return the data between "2017-03-03 to 2017-03-04". But It shows the data from 2nd March [ 2017-03-02]. don't know why this return entire output and time filter section is not working.
Note : Endtime parameter value takes effect, mean it shows the output upto what mentioned in the endtime. But it doesn't consider the start time.
Anyone have a suggestion on this.

So there are a few things to consider:
There is usage date/time and then there is reported date/time.
Former tells you the date/time when the resources were used while the
latter tells you the date/time when this information was received by
the billing sub-system. There will be some delay in when the
resources used versus when they are reported. From this link:
Set {dateTimeOffset-value} for reportedStartTime and reportedEndTime
to valid dateTime values. Please note that this dateTimeOffset value
represents the timestamp at which the resource usage was recorded
within the Azure billing system. As Azure is a distributed system,
spanning across 19 datacenters around the world, there is bound to be
a delay between the resource usage time (when the resource was
actually consumed) and the resource usage reported time (when the
usage event reached the billing system) and callers need a predictable
way to get all usage events for a subscription for a given time
period.
The query only lets you search for reported date/time and there is no provision for usage date/time. However the data returned back to you contains usage date/time and not the reported date/time.
Long story short, because of the delay in propagating the usage information to the billing sub-system, the behavior you're seeing is correct. In my experience, it takes about 24 hours for all the usage information to show up in the billing sub-system.
The way we handle this scenario in our application is we fetch the data for a longer duration and then pick up only the data we're interested in seeing. So for example, if I need to see the data for 1st of March then we query the data for reported date/time from 1st March to say 4th March (i.e. today's date) and then discard any data where usage date is not 1st of March.
If we don't find any data (which is quite possible and is happening in your case as well), we simply tell the users that usage information is not yet available.

Related

Azure cost analysis for a particular subscription using Python SDK

So I'm trying to automate fetching the current cost and cost forecast (Like it is shown under cost analysis for a particular subscription) for a particular subscription using python SDK but I haven't been able to find a single API that does this yet.
I've tried using UsageAggregate and Rate card but I haven't really figured out a way to find the cost for the current month to date. If there is an API that I'm missing or if I need to calculate monthly costs myself, I'd appreciate any code snippets or help.
If you already have the usage and the ratecard data, then you must combine them.
Take the meterId of the usage data and get the related ratecard data.
The ratecard data contains the MeterRates and the IncludedQuantity which you must take.
There are probably multiple meter rates and the included quantity because there are probably different costs per usage (e.g. first 10 calls for free, 3 GB for free, ...).
The consumption starts/is reseted at the 14th of the month. That's the reason why you have to read the data from the whole billing period (begins with 14th of each month), because that's the only way how you get the correct consumption.
So, if you are using e.g. Azure Functions and you have a usage of 100.000 units per day and you want the costs from 20th - 30th, then the calculation works as follows:
read data from 14th - 30th. These are 17 days and therefore it used 1.700.000 units. The first 400.000 are for free = IncludedQuantity (so in this sample the first 4 days).
From the 400.001 unit on, you have to take the meter rate (0,0000134928 €) and calculate the costs. 1.300.000 * 0,0000134928 = ~17,54€.
Fortunately, the azure functions have only one rate. If the rate changes e.g. after 5.000.000 units, then you also have to take this into account. If you have the whole costs, then you can filter on your date which is 20.-30. and you will get the result.
Its calculation implemented in C# and published it as a NuGet package here. It also contains a sample console which you could use to export the data.
I know I am bit late to the party, but after struggling with the same problem, I managed to create the code for getting the cost of a resource group using
azure.mgmt.costmanagement
Link to cost management API
Code sample is in my answer here

How to copy managed database?

AFAIK there is no REST API providing this functionality directly. So, I am using restore for this (there are other ways but those don’t guarantee transactional consistency and are more complicated) via Create request.
Since it is not possible to turn off short time backup (retention has to be at least 1 day) it should be reliable. I am using current time for ‘properties.restorePointInTime’ property in request. This works fine for most databases. But one db returns me this error (from async operation request):
"error": {
"code": "BackupSetNotFound",
"message": "No backups were found to restore the database to the point in time 6/14/2021 8:20:00 PM (UTC). Please contact support to restore the database."
}
I know I am not out of range because if the restore time is before ‘earliestRestorePoint’ (this can be found in GET request on managed database) or in future I get ‘PitrPointInTimeInvalid’ error. Nevertheless, I found some information that I shouldn’t use current time but rather current time - 6 minutes at most. This is also true if done via Azure Portal (where it fails with the same error btw) which doesn’t allow to input time newer than current - 6 minutes. After few tries, I found out that current time - circa 40 minutes starts to work fine. But 40 minutes is a lot and I didn’t find any way to find out what time works before I try and wait for result of async operation.
My question is: Is there a way to find what is the latest time possible for restore?
Or is there a better way to do ‘copy’ of managed database which guarantees transactional consistency and is reasonably quick?
EDIT:
The issue I was describing was reported to MS. It was occuring when:
there is a custom time zone format e.g. UTC + 1 hour.
Backups are skipped for the source database at the desired point in time because the database is inactive (no active transactions).
This should be fixed as of now (25th of August 2021) and I were not able to reproduce it with current time - 10 minutes. Also I was told there should be new API which would allow to make copy without using PITR (no sooner than 1Q/22).
To answer your first question "Is there a way to find what is the latest time possible for restore?"
Yes. Via SQL. The only way to find this out is by using extended event (XEvent) sessions to monitor backup activity.
Process to start logging the backup_restore_progress_trace extended event and report on it is described here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/managed-instance/backup-activity-monitor
Including the SQL here in case the link goes stale.
This is for storing in the ring buffer (max last 1000 records):
CREATE EVENT SESSION [Verbose backup trace] ON SERVER
ADD EVENT sqlserver.backup_restore_progress_trace(
WHERE (
[operation_type]=(0) AND (
[trace_message] like '%100 percent%' OR
[trace_message] like '%BACKUP DATABASE%' OR [trace_message] like '%BACKUP LOG%'))
)
ADD TARGET package0.ring_buffer
WITH (MAX_MEMORY=4096 KB,EVENT_RETENTION_MODE=ALLOW_SINGLE_EVENT_LOSS,
MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY=30 SECONDS,MAX_EVENT_SIZE=0 KB,MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE=NONE,
TRACK_CAUSALITY=OFF,STARTUP_STATE=ON)
ALTER EVENT SESSION [Verbose backup trace] ON SERVER
STATE = start;
Then to see output of all backup events:
WITH
a AS (SELECT xed = CAST(xet.target_data AS xml)
FROM sys.dm_xe_session_targets AS xet
JOIN sys.dm_xe_sessions AS xe
ON (xe.address = xet.event_session_address)
WHERE xe.name = 'Verbose backup trace'),
b AS(SELECT
d.n.value('(#timestamp)[1]', 'datetime2') AS [timestamp],
ISNULL(db.name, d.n.value('(data[#name="database_name"]/value)[1]', 'varchar(200)')) AS database_name,
d.n.value('(data[#name="trace_message"]/value)[1]', 'varchar(4000)') AS trace_message
FROM a
CROSS APPLY xed.nodes('/RingBufferTarget/event') d(n)
LEFT JOIN master.sys.databases db
ON db.physical_database_name = d.n.value('(data[#name="database_name"]/value)[1]', 'varchar(200)'))
SELECT * FROM b
NOTE: This tip came to me via Microsoft support when I had the same issue of point in time restores failing what seemed like randomly. They do not give any SLA for log backups. I found that on a busy database the log backups seemed to happen every 5-10 minutes but on a quiet database hourly. Recovery of a database this way can be slow depending on number of transaction logs and amount of activity to replay etc. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/recovery-using-backups)
To answer your second question: "Or is there a better way to do ‘copy’ of managed database which guarantees transactional consistency and is reasonably quick?"
I'd have to agree with Thomas - if you're after guaranteed transactional consistency and speed you need to look at creating a failover group https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/auto-failover-group-overview?tabs=azure-powershell#best-practices-for-sql-managed-instance and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/managed-instance/failover-group-add-instance-tutorial?tabs=azure-portal
A failover group for a managed instance will have a primary server and failover server with the same user databases on each kept in synch.
But yes, whether this suits your needs depends on the question Thomas asked of what is the purpose of the copy.

How do I identify the source of Cosmos DB RU consumption?

Context
I have an Azure Function which executes daily, it is change tracking a pricing feed with the results stored in a Cosmos DB. Each time it runs it compares the latest price from the feed, against the most recent values in the DB collection and writes a new item if there is a difference. It is scheduled to run at 23:55 each day. The overall setup is tiny, with 10 items in the DB, and changes seen usually once a week. My consumption is 3.84 RUs for the daily execution when the price hasn't changed.
Question
In addition to the expected activity at 23:55 each day, there is additional activity appearing almost every 3 hrs 45 mins. This unexpected activity consumes 4 RUs each time (around 24 RUs per day). How can I identify the source of the additional activity?
Other info
I noticed that the backups were scheduled to 4 hours, so I changed that to daily. That didn't help.
Since noticing the additional usage I have added diagnostic settings to save all logs into a Log Analytics workspace. I can see that the RUs are Read operations, Type = AzureDiagnostics, requestResourceType = Collection, Source IP = 51.11.40.180, 1 of the 4 is a read against the __Cosmos/colls/__Query collection. This suggests to me that it's the diagnostics causing the cost. I disabled the diagnostic settings to see if that reduced my RU consumption, but it does not.
Is it just a case that diagnostics are run by Microsoft and that is simply part of having a cosmos db?
And that usually it's a smaller proportion of the overall cost, therefore not an issue?

Tracking a counter value in application insights

I'm trying to use application insights to keep track of a counter of number of active streams in my application. I have 2 goals to achieve:
Show the current (or at least recent) number of active streams in a dashboard
Activate a kind of warning if the number exceeds a certain limit.
These streams can be quite long lived, and sometimes brief. So the number can sometimes change say 100 times a second, and sometimes remain unchanged for many hours.
I have been trying to track this active streams count as an application insights metric.
I'm incrementing a counter in my application when a new stream opens, and decrementing when one closes. On each change I use the telemetry client something like this
var myMetric = myTelemetryClient.GetMetric("Metricname");
myMetric.TrackValue(myCount);
When I query my metric values with Kusto, I see that because of these clusters of activity within a 10 sec period, my metric values get aggregated. For the purposes of my alarm, I can live with that, as I can look at the max value of the aggregate. But I can't present a dashboard of the number of active streams, as I have no way of knowing the number of active streams between my measurement points. I know the min value, max and average, but I don't know the last value of the aggregate period, and since it can be somewhere between 0 and 1000, its no help.
So the solution I have doesn't serve my needs, I thought of a couple of changes:
Adding a scheduled pump to my counter component, which will send the current counter value, once every say 5 minutes. But I don't like that I then have to add a thread for each of these counters.
Adding a timer to send the current value once, 5 minutes after the last change. Countdown gets reset each time the counter changes. This has the same problem as above, and does an excessive amount of work to reset the counter when it could be changing thousands of times a second.
In the end, I don't think my needs are all that exotic, so I wonder if I'm using app insights incorrectly.
Is there some way I can change the metric's behavior to suit my purposes? I appreciate that it's pre-aggregating before sending data in order to reduce ingest costs, but it's preventing me from solving a simple problem.
Is a metric even the right way to do this? Are there alternative approaches within app insights?
You can use TrackMetric instead of the GetMetric ceremony to track individual values withouth aggregation. From the docs:
Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.TelemetryClient.TrackMetric is not the preferred method for sending metrics. Metrics should always be pre-aggregated across a time period before being sent. Use one of the GetMetric(..) overloads to get a metric object for accessing SDK pre-aggregation capabilities. If you are implementing your own pre-aggregation logic, you can use the TrackMetric() method to send the resulting aggregates.
But you can also use events as described next:
If your application requires sending a separate telemetry item at every occasion without aggregation across time, you likely have a use case for event telemetry; see TelemetryClient.TrackEvent (Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DataContracts.EventTelemetry).

Azure Monitor Custom log search Query - understanding Period and Frequency

UPDATE:
the actual problem is different from what I've described. I'll provide and update/edit to this ticket once we'll resolve the issue. More details may be found at this thread - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Log-Analytics/Reliably-trigger-alerts-for-Log-Analytics-log-entries/m-p/319315/highlight/false#M1224
Original question:
We use Azure Monitor to create alerts based on logs in Log Analytics. For this we choose our Log Analytics account as a "RESOURCE", then choose "Custom log search" signal name for "CONDITION". Alert logic - "Number of results greater than 0".
Sample query:
search *
| where ResourceProvider == "MICROSOFT.DATAFACTORY" and status_s == "Failed"
For Period and Frequency lets set 15 minutes. All looks simple, but...
The issue: described above setup does not work (it works sometimes), because alerts are fired only sometimes, a lot of them are missed which is completely unacceptable behavior.
If we set Period = Frequency = 5 minutes we basically miss almost every event. Period = Frequency = 15 minutes works better, but still a lot of events are missing. Period = Frequency = 30 works even better, but all this looks weird.
Important notice - logs are collected from Data Factory V2 into Log Analytics. I suspect that alert misses are due to the fact that logs are delivered to Log Analytics with some delay (up to several minutes). So when Azure Monitor evaluates alert query for the last 15 minutes (Period=15) it might be that most resent log entries are still not in Log Analytics. When next query evaluation is executed in 15 minutes it will miss the logs that were ingressed with a delay for prev 15 minutes interval. Is this assumption correct? If so, this is very weird - how then we supposed to configure Period and Frequency values? If I set Period > Frequency (e.g. Period = 30 and Frequency = 5, which means "evaluate expression every 5 minutes, take data for last 30 minutes from current time") then we get multiple duplicated alerts because Period is larger than Frequency so there is a big chance of log search query returning the same log entries every 5 minutes - this is highly undesirable behavior.
Issue happened to be with a buggy bahavior of ARM template creating alerts. Thanks to Stanislav Zhelyazkov it has been nailed down and resolved - I use alternative ARM API now and it seems to work fine. More details on the topic may be found here - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Log-Analytics/Reliably-trigger-alerts-for-Log-Analytics-log-entries/m-p/309610.

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